GameTavern - Would you Live Forever?

Have you ever heard of nanotechnology? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology It exists and nanobots exist too, but they're currently pretty useless. It's circuitry and robotics so tiny that you cannot see it. All we really need to do to give these nanobots a purpose is develope our technology and find better ways to make things smaller, cheaper and more functional. Technology developes like this all the time. Think about how super computers used to be the size of a house with a tiny fraction of the processing power capable today. Nanobots will shrink in size and increase in functionality eventually.

What sort of functionality will they have? Well you could stick some in your blood stream to destroy cancerous cells, repair DNA errors and stimulate growth of other important cells. Essentially, these medical miracles could reverse everything that makes your body age. Dying isn't some magical process where you just "get old" and your body decides to sleep forever. Your body isn't perfect and it does produce bad cells, cells that don't function properly but stick around anyway. Certain cells die off too, cells that you need to live. These are the things that cause you to get old and die. What if we could prevent or reverse all of these things? Could we not live forever?

Sure we could. Everyone could. The planet may not be able to sustain it, not yet anyway, but it could happen. Wars will still happen and people will still die, but we could live forever. Not too sure about how we would eat or what we would eat (if we even needed to eat) but we would figure something out. Then what? If we lived forever, would we restrict reproduction to the wealthy and powerful? How quickly would technology be developed if the worlds greatest minds never died? People could spend hundreds of years learning everything about what they want to persue and then go for it.

Likewise, you would probably see a lot of fucked up things.

People wouldn't know what to do with their lives. Personally, I would devote myself towards solving society's problems, whatever they would be in that sort of scenario, and towards advancing technology. We're only just beginning to learn about time and space and how to observe and manipulate these things. Right now though I need to get Robs computer to his office in working condition before he gets in this morning. This way, I don't have to deal with him trying to make conversation about things he doesn't understand. (He thinks he's a technology expert.)

EDIT:I realize that I have made no mention of the likely abuse of nanotechnology and the potential for a catastrophic apocalypse in the form of flesh-eating nanorobots killing all of mankind.